


Your Best Nightmare

by The_Exile



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Apocalypse, Bad Decisions, Doom, Endgame, F/M, Spoilers, Swearing, Trapped in a Hell dimension, Witcher 3, dark humour, implied possible later Geralt/Ciri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 04:40:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11866929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: Geralt tried to jump in after Ciri when she went through the portal to stop the White Frost. Now he's trapped in the unfathomable hellish chaos between worlds, his soul in constant peril, Ciri is running out of time to prevent the Apocalypse as it is, and both Lambert and Avallac'h are yet again being creepy about the whole thing.





	Your Best Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wednesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wednesday/gifts).



"I can't believe you would be so bloody stupid," Ciri growled. Her next words were a lot more colourful, muttered under her breath as she changed one of the canisters of vile Witcher potions, she wasn't sure what was in them but Vezemir insisted that it was the only thing that could awaken Geralt from such a powerful curse, and that she shouldn't worry too much about it being about as potent as the stuff they use for the Trial of the Grasses. Avallac'h was there at his bedside too, chanting something in Aen Sidhe that he claimed would help with the more magical nature of the fugue while the potions hopefully did something about the physiological aspects of Geralt's coma without killing him or mutating him into something uglier than Uma. The eerie mantra made the hair on the back of Ciri's neck prick up, left an ozone taste in the back of her mouth. She still didn't know much about magic except her own distinct variety of the art but she could sense that this was some heavy duty casting. 

Ciri wished she spoke more Aen Sidhe. As it was, she only really knew the vicious expletives she liberally scattered into a melange of other particularly scathing insults she had picked up from various parts of the world, flowing effortlessly from High Nilfgaardian to an obscure Skellige dialect. She had even made Lambert blush. The swiving moron deserved it, though. I mean, who was so fucking obsessed with always being the hero of the story that they sabotaged a critically timed and very specifically destined quest to save all the worlds, not just Vizima, by hurling themselves into the middle of it?

"Were you jealous, or did you assume you were saving me?" she demanded, "The valiant Witcher rescuing the helpless damsel... well, I've got news for you, just because I got into trouble once doesn't mean I need you to... oh, what the hell, you can't understand anything I'm saying, can you? You're not really here any more." 

I'm not going to cry, she told herself, blinking back tears that had already formed while forcing her face back into its stony mask. I'm not one of his girls to weep over him. He bloody well got himself into this mess and...

"You know, you could guide him out of there," announced Avallac'h, his voice still irritatingly calm and measured, despite the urgency of the situation and the physiological improbability of she had told Geralt in Aen Sidhe where he could shove a pineapple. 

"Finished making weird noises?" she enquired.

"There is only so much I can do - I am still recovering from my own ordeal - and he has drifted far beyond the threshold of where he can be brought back with our usual level of magic. Your magic, however, is not the usual. And you have a very close spiritual connection to him."

Ciri strongly implied that the revered sage could shove the close spiritual connection in the same place that the pineapple went. It did not appear to amuse him.

"It won't be easy," he went on, "He's drifted in the exact opposite direction to your original goal and we don't have much time left."

"I'm not going to throw the entirety of creation into the White Frost just for one man," said Ciri, folding her arms.

"Then if you want to have any hope of saving him, you have to move now."

"Or I could prepare properly for the upcoming mission that's been made about ten times more complicated because of this stupid stunt he pulled."

"His death isn't going to quick or painless, you know," Avallac'h looked sadly down at the silver-haired Witcher. He muttered something unintelligible in the fevered nightmare that wouldn't fully dissipate even with enough potent Witcher drugs to kill a bear. His face matched his hair, lines of pain creasing his usual unearthly beauty, his eyes open as he slept, staring wildly into something none of the others could see. A chaotic void, Avallac'h had explained to her, a morass of ever-shifting sensations as he fell from world to world, and not with clean transitions either, forced to stare into the unfathomable space between the worlds as he was dragged in at impossible angles. Space, time, cause and effect, any impression of his own identity compared to the infinity around him, they had probably all been stripped from him by now. There was a reason you didn't get given this power unless you had the exact correct genetic formula for surviving it. Had he been anyone but himself, with his usual stubborn insistence on clinging to life, his soul would have been torn apart by the forces of raw creation and destruction in between worlds that you were supposed to open proper portals between, not just hurl yourself into. Large amounts of Avallac'h's magic, and not a small portion of her own that she was supposed to be conserving to counteract the Apocalypse, had been channelled into advanced warding spells to keep up some kind of shield between Geralt and the chaos that tried to rip his soul away from its tiny frail vessel.

"There are things living in there," continued Avallac'h, "Things that feed on souls like his, souls that have somehow strayed from the usual path of their world and fallen through the cracks. I didn't tell you about them because your magic is specifically designed to make sure you never have to see one, and because even trying to describe one brings back memories of things that gave me nightmares for years. All you'll see is tentacles, kind of gelatinous tentacles in the dark, and this buzzing noise..."

"You're not making me want to go out there any more, you know!"

"Did you know that souls are divisible? I found this out when I saw one of these things slowly strip off bits of..."

"Oh, okay, I'll go and save the swiving moron!" she snapped.

"The process of finding out exactly where he is, it involves making a very deep contact with his soul. It is rather... intimate. I'll help if you like," he smiled, a look that was somehow deeply terrifying.

"You'll help how and with what, you randy old bugger?" she glared at him, wishing that basilisks really turned people to stone and that she was a basilisk. 

"You're right, I should observe human standards of propriety when I am a guest in their lands. I will go and make some arousing tea so that I am not in the room while you remove your clothes," he sighed whistfully.

"Remove my clothes for what? Hey, don't leave halfway through an explanation!" she yelled at his back as he hurried away with surprising speed and grace for his age.

I don't care what he says, she snarled, I am NOT removing any clothing. Not only is Lambert hiding behind that pillar again, it's getting colder around here. Screw that, it seems colder everywhere these days. She shivered, and not just because of the cold.

Geralt let out a strangled yell. She whipped her head around to look at his face but he was already back to ranting under his breath and looking like a corpse. Still, there was a strange serenity in his private pain. In a way, she admired him. Somehow, beyond all probability, he had found a hiding place so deep and dark and obscure that it wouldn't go to shit with the rest of the Universe.


End file.
